Ask This Old House

Kevin

Today on "Ask This Old House"...

Mark

I'll show you some cool techniques for cutting stone without losing its character.

Jenn

I'll share with you a few really great things about Echinaceas. Echinaceas are a very durable plant. They're deer-resistant, they're drought-tolerant, they're pollinators. Bees and butterflies love them, so all these attributes make it a very popular plant.

Richard

I'll show you how to upgrade and old kitchen sink like this to this.

Tom

And I'll help a homeowner wrap up some finishing details of their kitchen renovations. You let the saw do the work, and it's good.

Kelly

Yeah.

Kevin

Hey, Mark.

Mark

Hey,

Kevin. Kevin

Look at you. You got all the heavy equipment out here, huh?

Mark

Oh, yeah.

Kevin

Are we busting some rock today?

Mark

Right. So what I wanted to show you is, you know, you and I have done this a couple of times, but there are old-school tools and methods for splitting stone, cutting stone, and shaping stone.

Kevin

Yeah.

Mark

And there are new methods.

Kevin

And so new -- I'm looking at things with chords and big blades.

Mark

Right.

Kevin

And old -- things that you put in your hand, you can start whacking away, right?

Mark

That's right. Hammer and chisel, these other carbide chisels, so they're harder than the rock, which will make them split much easier.

Kevin

This is your preference, for sure. I know you always grab these things and start whacking away, but, I mean, I'm thinking to myself, "Why am I going to pick up this when I could pick up this?"

Mark

Right. So that's the problem here. A guy like me who's been doing it for a long time, everything seems to be easy. I can take a knob, make it go away, bring my stones together, walk away, get the new stone. Today, unfortunately, we don't have a lot of guys that have those skills. Hard to develop them if you don't do it young, so what we're seeing a lot of now is these saws, grinders, and bigger saws.

Kevin

And I guess the fact that the saws even exist make it easier to grab them, right? Because you could've grabbed something like this 20, 30 years ago, or at least something like this.

Mark

Right. Right.

Kevin

Okay, so I mean, this is real old-school too, right? This is for splitting.

Mark

This will split that rock right in half.

Kevin

Feather and wedge.

Mark

With feather and wedge.

Kevin

What are we doing today? What do you want to do? You want to show me how to whack? You want to show me how to cut, or both?

Mark

Well, we've done this, so we know the result. But what I do want to show you is the cut, the clean cut that a saw's going to make. As a stone mason, I like to see my joint between the stones, 3/8 of an inch, max, 3/4 of an inch, and you can see if I bring these two stones together, I'll get my 3/8 right there. But I got a little gap right here.

Too much. Mark

Too much. So if I take my saw and cut that, I'll be able to bring it closer from the bottom to the top.

Kevin

Okay, so we gonna do some cutting?

Mark

So let's do some cutting. I'll start with this grinder, I think.

Kevin

You're not going to go all the way through.

Mark

Just going to do that. I want to keep as much roughness as possible, even though I am using the saw.

Kevin

Okay.

Mark

Let's switch it up with... Alright.

Kevin

So there's your 3/8.

Mark

So we have the 3/8, but what do you notice about that? Look at how straight that joint is.

Kevin

Yeah, which one of these is not like the other?

Mark

Exactly.

Kevin

That looks like a real stone. This looks like a real stone that's been cut by a saw.

Mark

Exactly. We do have a remedy.

Kevin

Okay.

Mark

So I just have to take the stone, get my brick hammer, and again, all I'm going to do is just bang it up. And give it imperfections back.

Kevin

Normally, you would have done that whole process -- you -- would have done it by hand.

Mark

Yeah, exactly.

Kevin

Much faster for a guy like me or even some of your guys to do with the saw, but you do have to take it back by hand a little bit.

Mark

Again, I can't leave that sawn edge and look at it. I know it's going to be a saw mark. Right now, that does not look like a saw mark to me, especially if I bring it in close.

Kevin

Yeah. That looks terrific.

Mark

So that's what we're looking for, and we know we vary a little bit. But that's the character of the stone.

Kevin

Yeah, that's awesome, right there.

Mark

Yeah.

Kevin

Alright. Appreciate it, Mark. Good info.

Mark

Alright, Kevin.

Kevin

Hey, we're going to split that, right? You just can't leave it there.

Mark

We can't leave this here. Let's go. Let's go.

Kevin

No, we got to split this thing.

Mark

Let's make music, as they say.

Chuckles

Kevin

Mark

You hear the music?

Kevin

I do.

Mark

There she goes. Yeah. Kev, if you want to grab your hammer and give me some taps. Alright. Sweet, sweet. It was. Always is.

Jenn

A great perennial to use in your landscape is Echinacea, otherwise known as coneflower. Echinaceas are a very durable plant. They're deer-resistant. They're drought-tolerant. They're pollinators. Bees and butterflies love them, so all these attributes make it a very popular plant. One of my favorite things about Echinacea are their colors. Traditionally, you would just see purple, but over the years, they've developed cultivars with many different colors. As you can see here, this is beautiful yellows and reds and oranges coming out. One of my favorites is Sombrero. It's a red, deep orange. Beautiful. Echinaceas are a full-sun plant. They grow in zones 3 to 8, so they could pretty much grow anywhere in the continental U.S. I like to use Echinacea in the landscape for a pop of color, so mid-June, July, I'll plant them as a border or in clumps within a garden, and they look great with hydrangeas, beebalm, butterfly bush. So if you always pair three or four things that bloom at the same time together, it will really make your garden sing. Each plant has multiple blooms, so I like to cut off the spent blooms in a process called deadheading. To deadhead, you take your bypass pruners, look at the spent bloom, follow it all the way down the stem until you get to the next fresh set of blooms. Give it a nice, clean cut as close to the base as you can and wait for your next bloom to happen. They're pretty easy to divide, as well. You carefully dig them up by taking a shovel, go all the way around so the root ball doesn't fall apart. Take your shovel, make a clean cut in half, still trying to keep the roots all intact, and then transplant it to a new hole. There's no set time that I divide my Echinacea. Just if it's outgrown the space or you want it to look different in your garden, that's when it's time to transplant. With a little bit of maintenance and care, Echinaceas could be a very rewarding part of your garden.

Kevin

Hey,

Richard. Richard

Hey, how are you?

Kevin

Alright, so you and the kitchen sink again, huh?

Richard

Well, we've been using this prop for all kinds of things, you know, everything but the kitchen sink, so today, we're actually going to talk about changing the kitchen sink.

Chuckles

Kevin

Alright.

Richard

So the standard size sink in America is 25 by 22 inches, and this is pretty much the builder's model. Pretty shallow draft right here and a pretty dated faucet, so if you can order the sink, the new sink, to the same size, you can get some different features -- a little more style right here, a little higher-level finish on both sides, both the weight and the finish.

Kevin

Upgrade the basin, and then maybe -- you've got a new faucet here. So upgrade the faucet at the same time.

Richard

This is what everybody's looking for now, that pulldown spray hose right here. So I thought we'd go step by step in how to change it safely, alright? So it starts, as always, by turning the water off.

Chuckles

Richard

Alright, turn off the hot. And the cold. Hopefully, these hold. Double-check that they held. Yep. I'll break the connection. Good. So these are both broken now. So now on the drain, you've got some choices about where you can break the connection. Anywhere there's a union nut, so to speak, so right here, right here, or this swivel right here. Simplest is just to break this top gasket right here, this top nut. Okay, so now that's completely clear. We've got nothing holding it to the plumbing connections anymore. It's just the clips. So now these are clips we have to loosen. There's one. Kevin, I want you to work with me here. Just grab that putty knife, and just score around the edge. This is the place where you can wreck the whole countertop.

Kevin

I will try not to wreck your whole countertop.

Richard

Alright. Feel good. I'm going to give it a little push, see if it comes up. Okay, in the back, it's out, so try the front carefully, please. Okay, good. Thank you. Alright, so that's going to fit perfectly. Alright, so we can do some of this work up here instead of under the sink. Now, every sink needs a basket strainer, and so basket strainer -- they keep changing it. We're not going to actually use the putty. I've always used putty, but this manufacturer, pretty interesting, they have a pre-made gasket that'll act in lieu of the putty. So we're going to trust it, I guess. I've always done putty, but they call out that this will do fine. Put that right there. Now I just have to catch that nut. Don't cross the thread.

Kevin

I won't. I promise.

Richard

Alright. That should snug that up perfectly. Alright, so for the faucet, we've got a single whole faucet right here, but three holes here. One second, Kevin. They've made a pretty interesting plate. Again, there's really no need for putty. They've engineered it with a gasket on this side and a gasket on this side, and this is really heavy-duty now. So this can go onto here, and just stick that -- stick all of it down inside. Good. Good. So that's through. So here's our hot and cold. Here's our connection from our pull-out spray that's going to make this connection here, but we have to attach this shank. And they have a special bracket here. I'll show you. And a nut. Now, what's great is that there's this... nut that's up in a tough place normally. Well, they provide a special tool with the faucet. Just pull this back, Kevin, just this way. So now with this...

Kevin

Mm.

Richard

...we can make that up. Remember all the times I've shown you the basin wrench, that tool that was designed to fit in tight places? No more needed.

Kevin

And this came with the faucet?

Richard

Yeah, it comes with the faucet.

Kevin

Clever.

Richard

It's a disposable piece.

Kevin

So you'll have 100 of these

in your truck at some point. Richard

Yeah. Quite the collection. Alright, faucet's connected. Basket strainer's connected. Now, it's a lot easier to actually caulk this sink while it's up here, too, so why don't you do that? Just go around with it. Okay, I'll do it? I was going to get you to do it, Tom Sawyer.

Kevin

I'll do it. I'll do it. So now we're just going to flip it over. Let's grab this. Careful. Try to drop it as true as we can. Nice. Okay, so now I'm going to go underneath and make up the clips to hold it down and then reconnect the water and drain. So if you order the sink same for same, it's a pretty interesting upgrade for not a lot of work. It's a pretty nice upgrade. I mean, that's a big improvement.

Richard

It looks great, and it's not too hard.

Kevin

It's very homeowner-friendly.

Richard

And I'll throw in the kitchen sink for you. You can repurpose this back at the house.

Kevin

You've never given me anything.

Chuckles

Richard

Kelly

Hey,

Tommy. Tom

Hey, Kelly, how are you?

Kelly

I'm good, how are you?

Tom

I'm very well, thank you. Oh, nice new kitchen.

Kelly

Thank you. I really appreciate it.

Tom

Place looks great. Well, you wrote me about some projects that you have.

Kelly

Yeah. So we bought this house a few months ago. It needed a little bit of a hug. We didn't have the budget to do a full renovation, so we decided to just take on a few projects ourselves. So we painted the cabinets.

Tom

Oh, they look nice.

Kelly

Thank you. We had someone come in and do a tile backsplash and floor for us.

Tom

Granite countertops.

Kelly

Yeah, yeah. They were existing, actually.

Tom

Oh, really?

Kelly

But now they look like a completely new kitchen.

Tom

Yeah. It's amazing what some paint and tile will do.

Kelly

Yeah. Yeah. And then we leveled the floors, did some tile.

Tom

Okay, so what do you need me for?

Kelly

So what we were left with is an unfinished baseboard.

Tom

Toolkit.

Kelly

Yeah, so when we moved in, there was vinyl baseboard and we're left with all the glue spots. And we weren't sure what to do to finish it off.

Tom

Yeah, I can see the glue spots, that's for sure. So you took those off. We can fix those. And do you have anything else? I think you said there was a couple of things.

Kelly

Yeah, so like I said, when we did the flooring, we decided to level the floor because it's such an old house, and when everyone left, we went to open the door and then noticed that it wouldn't open all the way.

Tom

So they didn't cut the door. Alright. So that's a pretty easy problem we can fix. So this is a little bit of a punch list. I mean, we deal with punch lists all the time on the job site. There's always something that's forgotten or you got to tighten up or touch up. So a little punch list in this kitchen. Not bad.

Kelly

Yeah, that would be a huge help.

Tom

Alright. Do you have any idea what you want to do for the product underneath it?

Kelly

So I was thinking about some PVC trim.

Tom

PVC trim. Okay, that comes white. Are you going to paint it?

Kelly

I don't think I want to paint it. I want something really easy to clean.

Tom

Alright. That sounds easy. We'll take some measurements and we can get started.

Kelly

Great. Thank you.

Tom

Alright, Kelly, here's the piece of PVC trim. I bought a bunch of this stuff to do all the base. This is a 1x4, which means it's 3/4 of an inch thick and 3 1/2 inches wide. Now, the base is going to sit right under here underneath the cabinet, right in front where the old one went. But now the baseboard here, your floor is straight, and the cabinets are still a little bit of an angle to them. So this has actually got a little bit of a wedge shape to it. So we have to scribe it to fit underneath at the top, not on the bottom, because the floor is nice and straight. But first thing I look at is the inside of the cabinet. The floor of the cabinet is up much higher than the lower edge of the cabinet right here. So if I take my hand, I can reach up there, and that space between the bottom edge here and the underside of the floor of the cabinet is probably 3/4 to one inch. So I could take this piece of 1x4 and put it up here and try to twist it, but the reason I can't get it in is because the end of the cabinet over here and the end of the cabinet down here is in my way. So what I have to do is take the baseboard, hold it against the face of the cabinet, and hold it up and down straight and tight to the floor. I'll mark, here, over here, because this is the other end of the cabinet right there, and we'll do it right here. Okay, so we push this one in and make sure it's down onto the floor. And I'll mark it right here, and I'll put a pencil mark on our base so we know where I want to notch it. Three locations. Okay, next thing I want to do is take this out of the way, and I want to measure from the underside here to my line. That will tell me how deep the notch has to be. That's a 1/4 of an inch. So I'm going to come down 1/4. I'm going to give me 1/8 of an inch more and make it 3/8 of an inch right there. Alright, so now we're going to cut these notches out, and I could do it with an electric saw or we could do it with a handsaw. Alright, so we're going to do it with a pull saw. I'll cut this one on the end, and I'm going to let you cut those.

Kelly

Great.

Tom

Alright. So I'm just going to cut. Now I got to turn it so I can cut the other way. Okay, so there's one. Alright, so now I'm going to have you cut these two here. First, we'll use a pull saw at the top. The weight of the saw, line your shoulder up with the handle of the saw, and you'll cut it straight. You're letting the saw do the work, and that's good.

Kelly

Yeah. Need to get one of these.

Tom

Alright, now to cut across this line of bottom here, we'll use a coping saw. A coping saw will allow us to come down onto the cut. The blade is on an angle, so when I come across, slowly turn the saw until I'm flat enough so that I can come across. Ready?

Kelly

Yep.

Tom

Because this section of the toe kick is meant to be removable because we ran it across the face of the dishwasher, we're going to screw it in place, and to hide the screws, we're going to spray them white.

Saw whirring

Tom

Alright, Kelly, I precut the pieces that are going to go around this cabinet, and we're going to do this one a little bit different than we did where the dishwasher is. We're going to miter the outside corners. Over there, we butted those pieces together because you want to be able to pull that base off if you ever have to service the washing machine. So I've cut them to fit. We're going to miter this one here. And I got a miter on both ends of this one. I'm going to slide it in like that, and that one is going to go on the other side. We're gonna put it in there loose because what I want to do is I want to glue this joint first, and then you're going to nail it. This is specially designed cement for this product. It's on. Okay, so our toe kick is in around the cabinets, and now it's time to tackle the second project. So now I see the door. It looks a little different there. Underneath the spacing. It hits the floor way back here. Now, when I look at the door back here, I can see that it settled down, so I can't just take a level and mark off of the door. So I think what we'll do is we'll take this space right here, which is 1/2 inch to the floor. And where this door hits the floor back here, if I take 1/2 off of this side of the door to nothing, it should open up about the same perpendicular to the wall.

Alright. Tom

Alright. Let's get it off the hinges and we can cut it down. Alright, ready? Let's bring it in. Alright, Kelly, I think we're all set. Your punch list is complete.

Kelly

Thank you so much. This is so amazing to finally have our kitchen done so we can settle in.

Tom

Yeah, it looks great, and it's funny how little things like this make a big difference.

Kelly

It really does.

Tom

So there's one thing left for you to do. Don't forget that I want you to sand off or take a razor blade and stand it up and scrape off that spackle once it's dry.

I can definitely do that. Tom

Alright. Well,

I'll leave it up to you. Kelly

Thank you so much.

Really appreciate it. Tom

My pleasure.

Thanks for all your help. Kelly

Thank you.

Kevin

Next time on "Ask This Old House"...

Scott

If you're looking to buy a new house, it's a good idea to have your electrical system inspected so you know what you're getting yourself into. Next, I'll take a look at the electrical panels. This will give us an idea of how much power we have coming in or what's available for future use and what's currently being used.

Tom

That's the door you wrote me about?

This is the door. Tom

Oh, it's a beauty. Looks like the finish is burnt right off of it.

Man

We'd like to keep, you know, everything as is, but, you know, clean it up, make it look-brand new, I guess.

Tom

Yeah. If you're up for it, I'm up for it.